Sir, - Dermot Keogh's review of Tom Garvin's 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy reminds me that over forty years a go, John J Hearne, who was legal adviser in the Department of External Affairs when Fianna Fail took office in 1932, told me that one of the first things Eamon de Valera did as Minister for External Affairs was to ask for the files on the Commonwealth Conferences of the 1920s. Some time later, he told John Hearne he had read them with interest, adding: "I didn't know ye had done so much." Yours etc.,
Alma Road, Monkstown, Co Dublin.